Word: union
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...what life could be like if the recent Senate compromise on immigration passes. Two busloads of tobacco workers, fresh from the Mexican state of Nayarít, are met and ministered to by a cadre of social and health workers, a federal agent from the Department of Labor, even a union organizer. In all, they spend almost four hours filling out paperwork, watching movies about how to avoid pesticide sickness and getting a set of no-nonsense rules (if you fight, you're fired; don't use the fire extinguisher to cool your beer) from the North Carolina Growers Association...
...definition, guest workers are tremendously vulnerable. And of all the steps in the process, none is more ripe for abuse than the recruiting of workers back in their home countries. Baldemar Velasquez, whose Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has been the union representing Eury's workers since 2004, says Eury recruits cleanly. But freelance agents who work with other recruiters and employers are not nearly so scrupulous. Peasants, lured at times by false promises about what they can earn, are being charged as much as $2,000 to get on recruiters' lists for U.S. positions. If the Senate plan does...
Those gangs may have already claimed one of Velasquez's own. Santiago Rafael Cruz, 29, who had worked for FLOC in Ohio before getting a job with the union in Mexico, was discovered bound and tortured to death in its Monterrey offices, not far from the U.S. consulate, on April 9. The crime is still unsolved, but the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has recommended increased security measures for all FLOC workers in Mexico...
...effect of Apple's FairPlay software is that music purchased on iTunes plays only on Apple products--i.e., on iPods. The result is that DRM helps perpetuate Apple's quasi-monopoly in the portable digital-music-player market, which ironically has a slightly Microsoftesque air about it. (The European Union is looking into an antitrust suit.) If--meaning when--Apple drops DRM for good, the playing field on the hardware side will get a whole lot more level and the iPod will have a whole lot more serious competition. Zunes, Sansas and other exotic digital fauna will all be able...
...Serbian province of Kosovo, whose 2 million people are predominantly ethnic Albanians and want independence, has been administered as a U.N. protectorate since NATO's 78-day bombing campaign forced Serbian withdrawal in 1999. Now, U.N.'s special envoy Marti Ahtisaari has proposed de facto independence under European Union supervision for Kosovo, with a view to subsequently integrating both it and Serbia into the EU. Ahtisaari's plan is backed by the U.S. and NATO countries, but Russia strongly objects to what it describes as a dangerous precedent for separatists elsewhere. And as an historical ally of Serbia, Russia cannot...